Close Reading at a Distance: Genre, Realism, and Ecology in Robinson Crusoe

This essay discusses close reading in the context of Franco Moretti’s claim that “no one will ever read … the great unread.” It offers further assessment of close reading by focusing on the issue of literary scale, a concept of “greatness” evoking measurements of size as well as value. This double sense of “greatness” necessarily calls for a theory of genre. I discuss genre as a modulator of “greatness” by referencing work by Ralph Cohen and Frederic Jameson. My eventual test case for reading literary works in terms of genre theory is a well-known realist novel, said to be the first of its kind. But as we know, Robinson Crusoe could not have been called a novel, let alone a realist one, upon its publication in 1719. It could only be classified that way by the 1740s when the genre got its name. Thus, genres can be seen as generative, moving back and forth through time, wavering in their relative administration of “greatness.” Genres oscillate. They ebb and flow, change and get updated. We might then consider Crusoe in the context of an emergent subgenre: ecological realism, anthropocene fiiction, or climate fiction (so-called, “Clifi”). Herein lies a classification paradox consistent within a paradox in time. The closer we read Crusoe , the farther it gets from its original classification. But on the upside of change, the less old categories start to matter the more relevant new ones become.